Slashgeo

The Ubikcan blog made a good work to analyse and document the geography of so-named terrorist countries, including a link to the Pentagon's New Map document (map). From the blog: "Barnett has dusted off these old geopolitical ideas and given them a new look for the 21st century. For example, what is to say that the "core" needs a periphery in order to sustain itself and exploit disparities in income (outsourcing or immigration as labor)? What we have observed is actually an increase in the concentration of power and wealth in the "core" rather than a decrease."

Slashdot discuss a story on Google Earth and its collateral damage. Their summary: "British news reports say insurgents are using Google Earth to pinpoint vulnerable targets within bases in Iraq. Could Google be doing more to prevent this? Should they be doing more? They certainly could explain more." From this article: "Documents seized during raids on the homes of insurgents last week uncovered print-outs from photographs taken from Google." Ogle Earth offers a long and pertinent analysis of the issue. From Ogle Earth: "Currently, images in Google Earth of Basra are from 2002, months before war. Up until a recent update, the images were likely from late 2004 and/or 2005."

Since our readers like to know, the official Google blog informs us of the new imagery they added this week, and instead of riddles, here's where the new Google Earth / Maps imagery is: "[...] this release has mostly aerial (higher-resolution) data, as well as some medium-resolution imagery for large swaths of land. [...] 2.5m imagery for the entire countries of: Tunisia, UAE, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. [...] Updated Terrain: Canada (20m and 90m) and Niagara Falls" Regarding imagery in sensible areas, Ogle Earth has a discussion and a video on 'terrorist' using Google Earth to 'plan their attacks on the Israeli military'. You'll find in related stories below several discussions on terrorism and virtual globes.

All Points Blog references an article from Computer World which goes into more details about this. From the article : "The terrorists who attacked various locations in south Mumbai last week used digital maps from Google Earth to learn their way around, according to officials investigating the attacks.

Investigations by the Mumbai police, including the interrogation of one captured terrorist, suggest that the terrorists were highly trained and used technologies such as satellite phones, and global positioning systems (GPS), according to police."